We Are Ruled by Professors

In an era in which university people proliferate in this administration and seem to make things far worse for the rest of us, we need to be reminded why we should not look to the university for answers.

Since we seem now to be ruled during this administration by former professors, here is a rant about what I have learned of the university.

Looking back at forty years…

I have some experience in academia: I spent 3 years at UC Santa Cruz, graduating in classics, two more, graduate and undergraduate, in formal study in Athens, at the College Year in Athens and the American School of Classical Studies, four at Stanford University for a PhD in classics, and then a 21-year stint as a professor at California State University Fresno.

I farmed before, during, and after the university tenures. I can’t count my current life at the Hoover Institution or my month of teaching each year at Hillsdale College as quite the same experience. Both, after all, are aberrant academic institutions — in the sense that the faculties and mission of these institutions resemble pretty much those of America off campus. (I have never met more sane people than at both places.)

The farm and the life with it were great gifts from my ancestors. Almost every weekend as an undergraduate and graduate student, and then nightly as a classics professor, I returned to the farm. People in the environs there were not hostile to learning; they just assumed that being a professor or writer was, and should be, not any different from welding or tractor driving.

Living in rural Selma was a sort of vaccination against the academic virus of self-importance and collective timidity. One must be somewhat self-reliant when bare vines somehow in ten months must pay for diapers and formula, when so much — weather, pests, markets, neighbors, intruders — conspire to prevent that. Fairly or not, I always admired a guy who could feed his family from 60 acres of tree-fruit (I could not) — and especially a lot more than I did an English professor, at least the sort I met over the last forty years.

So what did I learn in the university? I’ll try to be a bit less specific than I was in Who Killed Homer? written over a decade ago.

Lies, lies, and more lies

First was the false knowledge — odd for an institution devoted to free inquiry. The university runs like a 13th-century church in which the heliocentric maverick is a mortal sinner. So too on campus the Rosenbergs never spied. Alger Hiss was a martyr. Mao killed only a few who needed killing (see Anita Dunn on that one).

Che was not a murderous thug, but a hair-in-the-wind carefree motorcyclist. Minorities supposedly died proportionally higher in Vietnam — as they supposedly do now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are underrepresented as both undergraduates and as humanities graduate students. Anyone with an accented name obviously had picked grapes or was denied voting rights. Adlai Stevenson was an American saint, even more so than George McGovern. Only the unhinged even discussed doubts about global warming. Don’t question any of the above; it was all gospel — as we see now in D.C., from Keynes to Gorism to Cordoba as the beacon of Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition. (Doubt any of that, and that laid-back elbow-patched joking prof who told the class “Call me Bill,” in a flash, Gollum like, turned into a snarling jackal, screaming, “I am Doctor Jones, with important publications on climate change and a doctorate from Berkeley! How dare you question me!”)

Wounded fawns all

Next were the mock heroics. The philosophy professor who mastered his weedeater wanted us to think he had just stormed Iwo Jima. The gadfly who in the Academic Senate pushed through a resolution on a 170-2 approval vote demanding state sanction of gay marriage thought he was Mandela fighting back the forces of Neanderthal apartheid. My colleague the French professor believed that she belonged to the United Mine Workers when she trudged off to teach an 8 AM early-bird class. We heard for two years the Homeric battle of how the sociology prof, Odysseus like (or perhaps more in the Achilles strain), once somehow jump-started his car in the parking lot. We heard a lot that everyone was “tired” and “exhausted,” as if we had been painting all day or digging trenches for an irrigation company.

The World of Arugula

So there was the cluelessness about the material world, and both a repulsion and fascination for it. I farmed “raisin plants.” And why didn’t I let one or two owls do my pest management on 100 acres rather than use the poison that was born at Auschwitz? Machines always had to work — or else. When it hit 110 and the air conditioning went out in our building, profs sighed and damned “them” who couldn’t even keep us cool. (None had been on a roof at 120 or wondered how a compressor ran at all — or how a guy could spend four hours up there in Sahara-like conditions with all sorts of sockets and wrenches before his skull melted. [Note well, the campus machines worked far better than did the idea of graduating literate BAs.]) In the world of the professor, offshore drilling rigs can be started and stopped, come and go, sort of like an evening seminar. No wonder Professor Chu announced that California agriculture would dry up and blow away (and given the present policies, he may be right).

“Them”

Looking back at it all, envy seemed the university lifeblood. Most other professionals, you see, were, in comparison to us, overpaid —especially those whom we had the misfortune of sometimes coming in contact with, or, worse, even socializing among. Go to campus and the present demonization of Vegas, Wall Street, surgeons, and insurers makes perfect sense.

Money both repelled and yet attracted academics, those strange summer moths that hated the cash bulb and yet could not resist its radiance. MDs, MBAs, JDs — all these folks had studied far less than we had! And yet, most unfairly, they now made far more money! We, of course, to paraphrase Barack Obama, out of altruism had passed on all those easy avenues of getting rich (identifying a Latin gerundive or an underappreciated 19th suffragette being far more difficult than cracking open someone’s brain or building a shopping center). (By the way, did you ever really believe Barack or Michelle that they could have waltzed over to Wall Street and struck it rich — as if such merchandising and monetizing were no more demanding than community organizing? To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: “I’ve known Wall Street hustlers, and you’re no Wall Street hustler, Barack”.)

197 Comments, 117 Threads

1.
Seth Thatcher

Victor, I screamed with laughter as I read this latest post. My favorite line, “You see, it was the idea of struggle that mattered.” I have little knowledge of these types of folks, but what I remember of my undergraduate days at a run-of-the-mill university in Maryland is that this is a pretty good description. You have a scathing intellect. And yet, your compassion vastly exceeds that of nearly all in academia.

I have sometimes looked back over my life and considered which teachers I valued most and who were the best ones.

Although I’ve never been to one of your lectures nor speeches; nor have I ever met you, and I live in Toronto, I have to say, you rank at the very top, in a tie with my music teacher from when I was in my teens (last millennium).

She taught me how to learn. Your semi-weekly articles on this site teach me every week of some new insight, and I expect as long as I can read and as long as I’m in this dimension, I look forward to never being done learning from you.

This is an interesting read, but do you have any solutions rather than complaints? Should we dissolve these institutions and get rid of PhDs merely because they spent so much time studying and researching rather than in the fields? That does not sound like a recipe for competitive success with other nations devoting large resources towards education themselves. No one gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.

As for what motivates you to write this piece, are you taking a jab at Paul Krugman’s complaints that the stimulus is not big enough? Are you attacking him and others on the grounds that he is too entrenched in academia and thus his conclusions must be discredited on that basis alone? I find his comparisons to America in present day to that of 1938 (and how the stimulus that was World War II) to make a lot more sense than any of the ideas put forth by conservatives.

Every profession has its sets of characters so I’m not surprised academia does as well. I’m no fan of the heavy hand that comes with tenure, but attacking “intellectuals” seems more and more common these days among conservatives trying to attack the messenger like this piece does. Pick apart the message with facts of your own rather than cherry pick one former coworker who happened to be a murderer and not so subtly try to link all of them with his horrific acts.

In my Senior year at University of California, Irvine, one of my Music Composition classes was one day graced by the arrival of the actual Professor. It had been the assistant teaching every day until there were rumours we might actually glimpse the Teacher.

He was considered a star, brought over from USC or UCLA. Seventyish, he came nattily attired in super-tight black bike shorts, presumably to attract some cuties. But the ZZTop beard and leather beret probably didn’t help.

We sat through the entire hour class as he perched on a stool, legs apart, with his testicles hanging out of the bike shorts. Nobody would say anything.

The last straw, I dropped out of UCI that week after three years wondering what exactly was I doing there. That was of course the wrong decision, but it sure felt right at the time.

And we had or WWII vet English professor who would sit on the table and strum his guitar and tell us stories about getting cigarettes and condoms when they were taking leave. How enriching. Oh, he was there more than not, but never let anyone know when he wasn’t going to show. Great educator; not a biker!

I can’t speak for VDH’s motives, but I take away this from his rant: Don’t shut down academia, or at least discuss that topic another day. Do stop electing out-of-touch academic types to govern us.

Among young adults, I see a wide divide between those who have ever paid a light bill and those who haven’t. Among the governing class, I see a similar divide between those who have ever met a payroll and those who haven’t.

You’ve got that right. I had to laugh at my youngest daughter who is now a 25yo newbe engineer. My wife and I were singing “The Gravy Train’s pulling into town and dropping you off.” when she graduated. That first rent check was a traumatic experience as were the taxes taken from her first pay check.

If you lived in the absence of a fog bank you would see that the point is always not to criticize higher learning but to point out that higher learning not mixed with reason and reality is tilting at windmills. This is why we have sayings among us that go like this: “you don’t throw good money after bad” and “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” these are examples of rational thinking, quite unlike Krugman’s Keynesian rants.
As for instructions on what to do instead of; please read or re-read the 10 previous articles by Dr. Hanson, I’m sure you’ll find some inkling of what to do next. Good luck.

Jeffery,
I guess you didn’t see the irony of the statement:
“This is why we have sayings among us that go like this: “you don’t throw good money after bad” and “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” these are examples of rational thinking, quite unlike Krugman’s Keynesian rants.”

-Kind of like continuing Reagan’s “Trickle Down” economics of more tax cuts for the rich and more de-regulation will “stimulate” America into prosperity. From my vantage point (-Having worked since the ’70′s), it was the early ’80′s when all real industrial jobs began to vanish. What kind of prosperity has that given working Americans? Shall we continue to give the wealthy more breaks while wage earners struggle? How long must this cycle run until it is clearly not a prescription for prosperity for those who toil. Perhaps Keynesian economics isn’t a panacea for America, but then neither is Trickle Down economics. Not everyone can be a C.E.O. to think so isn’t “reason and reality” but is actually “tilting at windmills”.

“-Kind of like continuing Reagan’s “Trickle Down” economics of more tax cuts for the rich and more de-regulation will “stimulate” America into prosperity. From my vantage point (-Having worked since the ’70’s), it was the early ’80’s when all real industrial jobs began to vanish. What kind of prosperity has that given working Americans? Shall we continue to give the wealthy more breaks while wage earners struggle? How long must this cycle run until it is clearly not a prescription for prosperity for those who toil. Perhaps Keynesian economics isn’t a panacea for America, but then neither is Trickle Down economics. Not everyone can be a C.E.O. to think so isn’t “reason and reality” but is actually “tilting at windmills”.”
Sure you’ve worked since the 70′s – and where at? My suspicions are raised by the fact that you don’t seem to have noticed that “trickle down” worked for – oh – about 20 something years. And the wealthy get more breaks because they pay more taxes. 1% of the taxpayers paying 40% of the taxes, while only pulling down 17% of the income. Or are you one of those who can’t seem to understand that income taxes are based on income – not wealth. Odd, you sound just like one of those academics that Dr. Hanson described above, jealous of anyone who earns more than you do – even without that doctorate in early Sumerian poetry – just a shoddy MBA.

Ahh, yes, the false choice. Thanks for not letting us get too far without bringing up one of those. How about just not letting the government get too top heavy with theorists who have no real world experience?

Lance,
Talk about dense. How can you miss VDH’s wonderful points so thoroughly?

I’ll take a stab at your Krugman-fluffing comment:

Having swallowed the “WWII got us out of the Depression” Big Lie meme myself (repeat it enough and people believe it), just this morning a wise caller to Glenn Beck’s stand-in host said, “You can’t build a gigantic military machine, then send it to war and have it destroyed [or have it rust, unused, afterward] and pretend you are having economic growth.”

The caller is absolutely correct. Building a war machine did not end the Depression. The Depression continued through the War. My aged parents tell me often of how little the people had during the war: rationed gas, rationed food, continuous drives to collect rubber and raw materials. It was just like the Depression except 400,000 young Americans were dying overseas to build FDR’s four-chambered National Mall monument.

The civilian US population was forced by the government to hand in the spare tires from their pre-war civilian cars (if they had one)…as if the tiny tires could be mounted on a jeep or a half-track. In reality, dad tells me tires piled up on the edge of Chicago and rotted away, unused.

The Government’s goal was to make the population suffer “for the boys” and consider themselves part of the war effort — to divert their minds from government-caused privation, make FDR look like a savior and excuse even more government debt.

But WWII didn’t solve the Depression.

The Depression was “solved” because Germany burned down England and most of Europe and we then burned Germany and Japan to the ground. World production ceased.

America, unattacked save Pearl Harbor, was the only game in town. The world needed stuff and we were in position to supply it. That solved the Depression.

Paul Krugman is an idiot. I can only guess you run your own finances the way Krugman tells us the Federal Government should run our nation’s: are you running up your credit cards to get out of personal debt? Buying houses you can’t afford so you can stimulate your bottom line? Looking to others to pay your way instead of working?

Hmmm…looking to others to pay your way instead of getting a real job. Sounds like the very definition of a tenured professor to me….

One other massive change were the policy changes in 1946 which basically ended the nastier bits of the New Deal and the wartime mobilization. Frankly, FDR died at the right time, and the Republicans won a midterm election and kept government-loving Dems from keeping wartime command-economy structures intact as they wanted. Unlike the US, the UK elected “real” socialists who kept wartime mobilization structures, and thus the UK’s economy drifted for decades afterward.

The US still had a rather encumbered political economy by modern standards, but it was far better than most of the world, which was either Communist, destroyed, or both, so we had 20 years of broken-field running.

I often wondered why the Democratic political bosses got rid of FDR’s Vice President before the 1944 election and replaced him with an unknown like Truman who was a protogee of the ST Louis,MO party boss Pendergast. It seems that the crony mobsters were smart enough to put forward any Demomcrat as long as he wasn’t a closet Socialist/Communist ideologe. It is a good thing for the rest of us or we might have thrown away all the success we won in World War II like the Brits did and Obama is about to with the Iraq War.

Democrat insiders persuaded FDR to dump Henry Wallace, because he was a flake. (Among other things, he was devoted to Nicholas Roerich, a Russian pseudo-Buddhist guru.) Being FDR, he lied about it to Wallace, promised the VP slot to three different men, and finally designated Truman as the convention was underway. (Truman went there expecting to second the nomination of James Byrnes.)

Truman, BTW, was not unknown. He had been a Senator for 10 years, and the “Truman Committee” probes into war profiteering made headlines. Prendergast put Truman up for the Senate in 1934, but he didn’t own him, and in any case Prendergast went to prison in 1939.

That was exactly what was going through my mind when trudging through that Krugman drivel. Almost word for word, I scarily realize. For the number crunchers, we did not statistically emerge from the Great Depression until about 53-54. How someone can be as stupid as he is, defies logic.

Koblog,
-I guess you were making a play for the “Community Reinvestment Act caused Wall St. to fail” theory when you stated:

“…..Buying houses you can’t afford so you can stimulate your bottom line?”

You don’t need to be a university professor to know there was way more outstanding debt held by Wall Street than was contained in the loans made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Do us all a favor and try doing a bit of reading about derivatives, and how refinanced loans made by banks were turned into bundled securities. Read the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and you may begin to see the real reason for Wall Street’s fall, and not the popularized mime pushed by the likes of Glen Beck (-he’s a “university professor” BTW). One can educate themselves without the help of an icon of higher learning.

“Hmmm…looking to others to pay your way instead of getting a real job. Sounds like the very definition of a tenured professor to me….” -I wonder what constitutes a “real job” in today’s economy? (-you know, the one that replaced the former economy where workers had pensions and job security)

I had graduated from a large UC school and then worked for the same school for 10 more years before heading for the private sector, so I think I have a good perspective. What I ridicule and attack in the academia is not what it supposed to stand for (learning, scientific research, quest for knowledge, openness, intellectualism), but what is has become: a bunch little greedy closed minded self aggrandizing blow-hards. I don’t want to knock down the foundation of Academia, rather I wish we could cleanse it of the vermin that’s currently inherits its halls.

I have hired & fired many a college student…especially the minorities. I wouldn’t hire another minority for all the tea in China. They got into college because of the color of their skin. In the “real” world they expect a hand out or a hand up. Neither of which I have the time nor money for. It’s a shame it’s come down to this…but there it is. I call them “educated idiots”.

This is exactly why intelligent and hard-working minorities loathe affirmative action; while it may “help” their fellow less-capable minorities get into schools, it actually harms those who have outstanding ability and work ethic by lumping them in with the AA crowd.

You somehow completely missed the whole point. Academia needs to be accountable. Tenure for life is the poster child for unaccountability. Most don’t teach but for one or two times per class. Many shouldn’t even be counted as teachers.

You know, requiring university teachers to hold real world jobs for 5 years before being eligible for a teaching position is a wonderful idea. Thank you for inspiration! Add the elimination of tenure might actually fix “higher” education.

Oddly enough, I didn’t see any “cherry-picking” in this piece; I saw patterns of behavior supported by plentiful, if anecdotal, evidence and plausible (your mileage may vary) explanations for said seemingly-irrational behaviors.

I think Mr. Hanson’s decades in the academic world trump my handful of years, but everything he said “tracks” with my own experience of so-called higher education (outside engineering and some of the hard sciences) and the academics I’ve known socially.

The full-time professors of architecture with whom I studied (not the practicing architects who taught part-time) were some of the more useless human beings I’ve ever met.

There will always be good people in any institution. VDH is pointing out the weaknesses in a system that has been allowed to continue indefinately and unchallenged. Geez, you ask. “..where his solutions are…?”, I thought you were asking a rhetorical question until I realized you were not. (I disclose myself as a conservative,.. just in case.) I think he summed up the solutions in the end; tenure, lack of accountability and somewhere in between.. the inability of Professors to grasp the reality of the world. I am saving extra money as a hopeful grandparent so that I can send a grandchild to a school of higher learning where results matter as much as the truth. There are many like me and for an Academic to ignore the hostility ordinary citizens feel towards colleges and Universities is really..arrogant and pure folly. When my kids were in school, my son had a teacher that was absolutely dreadful. We called an impromtu parent meeting with the Principal and the teacher. Before the Principal called the teacher into the office to meet, I asked her to tell the teacher to bring her lesson plan for the week with her. I could tell when she made the request over the phone it was not going well. Of course she arrived with nothing..maybe some hastily scribbled notes, but the lesson plan was mostly empty and full of blank space. The Principal was livid but guess what? The crummy teacher never got let go and was there long after my son was out. An example of shoddy teaching and no real accountability. Let’s make schools back to what they used to be. Why so far left, when so many are somewhere to the right of that.

The academics who are most guilty of all this are those from frivolous disciplines. Professors in the hard sciences, engineering, and business disciplines tend to be more grounded. The reason is that these are fields where the answers have to work. If a bridge falls down, you can’t blame it on false consciousness.

The solution to this problem is to reform the structure of our colleges and universities. Right now there are a lot of departments that basically get welfare payments in the form of undergrads who are required to take courses from those departments. Want a degree in civil engineering? You’re going to be studying an awful lot that has nothing to do with that subject, event tangentially. Worse yet, much of what you’re going to be learning isn’t even true.

If we do away with all of the leftist-studies requirements and stick to the core curriculum for the major and basic courses (e.g. english-101) then an awful lot of these fraudulent departments will simply evaporate. When departments have to compete for students who are looking for knowledge that will help them in their careers after college, departments that specialize in useless drivel aren’t going to fare very well.

The humanities have been perverted by the left to the point that rather than adding to sum of human knowledge, they subtract from it. The free market is the best answer to this problem. When the public is no longer forced to purchase wrong answers, those who peddle them will either change their product line, or go hungry.

Lance, I live in Ann Arbor and associate with many connected with the University of Michigan and what is described by Mr Hanson is hilarious – in that every word smacks of the people I know and have known.
I come from a blue collar background, spent years in a factory, worked construction and ended up in real estate since 1967. That was after I spent a tour in Vietnam and then a longer tour in this town. The people in Vietnam were friendlier to those of us who served in the military.
Regretting all my life that I had not gone to college I finally enrolled a few years ago and took two classes before I could no longer take it. The first was a writing class in which we really didn’t do any writing or critiquing. No need. As the professor entered the room the first day of class her first words, after introducing herself were, “Everyone gets an ‘A;’ I hate grading papers. Later in the semester, in one of her every-class political rant she spoke of illegal immigrants and said, “What are borders, anyway? Imaginary lines drawn by a bunch of Gringos. She is an Irish immigrant.
The next class was on American Foreign Policy, taught by a former West Point teacher, a retired Colonel who got Ph.d in Military History at the University of Michigan. That’s the university that until a few years ago would not grant credits to Military Science courses required of the ROTC students. Of course the History of the UM was 4 credits, but the history of certain wars was non-credit for the ROTC.
Every class I had to listen to this recent convert to liberalism tell me how evil my country is; going back at least to the founding fathers.
The UM has a lounge named after Angela Davis, who is described as a “political activist.” Her trial for murder for smuggling guns into a courtroom where the judge and at least one bailiff were murdered by the accused Black Panthers (if I remember correctly). Yes, she got off when tried in court, but so have others whose names may pop into your mind right now.
Noam Chomsky is honored for attacking the School of the Americas and Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, where such things as “ethics in war,” are taught; not torture as the fraudulent protest organizers claim. What is left out is his minimizing, if not defending, the Khmer Rouge who slaughtered at least 2,000,000 citizens of Cambodia; and the terrorists who flew planes into the WTC.
A few characters? Come on.

VDH does nor describe the occasional oddball or character. Sadly, his description has long been the norm for tenured professors at most colleges, especially state-funded ones. There is no better place on Earth to have your ego stroked and to remain joyfully free from reality as a tenured professor. I should know – I have worked as an adjunct prof along side them for a long, long time. A burger jockey at Mickey Ds knows more about real economics than the typical econ prof who has never used his prodigious education to make real money out in the world.

And by the way, in addition to the learning, the laughing is even greater!!:

“Money both repelled and yet attracted academics, those strange summer moths that hated the cash bulb and yet could not resist its radiance.”

and

“… Doubt any of that, and that laid-back elbow-patched joking prof who told the class “Call me Bill,” in a flash, Gollum like, turned into a snarling jackal, screaming “I am Doctor Jones, with important publications on climate change and a doctorate from Berkeley! How dare you question me!…”

Truth is humour, or there’s truth in humour, or this is just so accurate and well written that I’m laughing hysterically at these and other parts of this week’s piece.

And remembering The Hobbit, and Gollum: “In The Two Towers, Samwise Gamgee named the good personality “Slinker”, and the bad personality “Stinker”. The two personalities often quarrelled when Gollum talked to himself (as Tolkien puts it in The Hobbit, “through never having anyone else to speak to”) and had a love/hate relationship.”

Academia has devolved to a point of a sort of moral and intellectual Parkinson’s disease. Or more accurately, the acute and bizarre onset of encephalitis lethargica.

For those unfamiliar with it, the movie about Oliver Sachs titled “Awakenings” portrayed some of the afflicted. In one salient part of the movie, Sachs (played by Robin Williams) hypothesizes that the disease was akin to a severe Parkinson’s, whereby the tics and tremors reached a level so intense, that they all caved in on themselves and rendered the victim frozen, in a sort of living death…as insubstantial as ghosts.

Academia on the far, farther, farthest left reaches of the American landscape, has contracted the disease. It is no longer a place of exploration, of testing ideas, of comparing, debating, contrasting…in order to expand the mind. It is a tundra, frozen over with the fury of an ice age, crusted, blocked, constipated with demands for cultlike adherence to the approved “message”.

There isn’t enough el dopa in the world to free academia from leftist hegemony or enough rock salt to melt the barren tundra’s miles of thickness coating an insulated world of coldness …frigidity to open discussion, principled dissent, another point of view.

Tenure is the safe harbor braced hard against the winds of change. Mediocrity untouched by sunlight. Adolescents being recruited by those frozen in arrested adolescence. We don’t get more for our children, because we don’t demand more for them. We feed them junk schooling, junk movies, and now we have given them junk government. The empty calories of leftism, a sugar buzz for life.

Ah, the tundra . . . “There isn’t enough . . . rock salt to melt the barren tundra’s miles of thickness coating an insulated world of coldness …frigidity to open discussion . . . Tenure is the safe harbor braced hard against the winds of change. Mediocrity untouched by sunlight. Adolescents being recruited by those frozen in arrested adolescence.”

Maybe if you’d stayed in school you wouldn’t be stringing together overwrought metaphors like a community college composition teacher. The first half of your rant is all bitterness, followed by a second half of resentment wrapped in contrived self importance.

Pippi, I have an advanced degree…and unlike the tenured effete, have to earn by accomplishment, rather than being protected from abject mediocrity. Slink back to the protective coating and false erudition of leftism. It’s not the conservatives that are leading this charge, you have lost the independents and moderates. Snivel and sneer at that, you arrogant prig.

Bruise? LOL, if you are a typical leftist, Pippi…you couldn’t bruise a banana. In speaking of conservatives, independents…or a herd of traitorous cretins…it is a movement that acts in concert.

But aside from being smug and pedantic, do you have a stance on anything substantive? This is a rhetorical question, of course. You do as you are told. All leftists do. They stopped thinking for themselves in 1968. Brain death and arrogance…quite the cocktail.

To borrow a line from agent Starling: “You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don’t you – why don’t you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you’re afraid to.”

I’d say you probably have quite a mess to clean out in your own backyard, PL, something similar to the one that Professor Stove observed 25 years ago at his place of employment: “The Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.”

Quite pathetic for a real live PROFESSOR to correct (incorrectly) someones grammar or diction on a blog post. Did you not catch the drift of the article being discussed? Why don’t you put a little more time and effort into teaching grammar to the young’uns under your charge, and less on pedantic displays like the above post. In other words, get a job; or better yet, get a life since your slacker-job hasn’t provided you one.

I got a kick out of “junk schooling, junk movies, and now we have given them junk government”. Beautiful. And whether it sounds bitter or not is a matter of opinion.

So, Prof LS, I gather from your post that you agree with the critique of tenured academics by CFB but disagree with the grammar; otherwise, your superior intellect would have given us the benefit of a much valued opinion.

Just in case there was any doubt about how cf bleachers sees the world, it’s composed of conservatives, independents, and traitorous cretins – the stuff of Fox News – fair and balanced. I guess that’s what an advanced degree gets you these days – one more ideologue swaying in concert, slowly back and forth between the mellifluous tones of Glenn Beck and middle-aged lap dance fantasies of Miley Cyrus. Just so you know, when Republicans take control of the Congress, and I believe they will, we’ll give you 24 hours to fix the economy, erase the deficit, reduce unemployment, end the war in Afghanistan, and make health care more affordable. Better get busy.

Maybe the arrogant overreaching has pushed us to a threshold of fear and disgust where we are finally ready to act.

Maybe the arrogant transparency of Barack Obama is a blessing we didn’t even deserve, because the temperature in the water has been increasing since about 1946, and we haven’t done much about it until a childlike charlatan appeared to impose his dorm-room vision on the world.

Something big is afoot. Somehow, more and more people are understanding how the pieces fit together. How the ruling class = academia + professional radicals + the msm; how they destroyed the black family to create an underclass which they now bribe with the wealth we created; how they consolidated power and brainwashed our children for 5 decades; how they have subverted families and small businesses and the classroom and religion and entrepreneurs to fracture the sinews of our culture; how they have undermined morality with moral relativism; how they have chipped away at our Constitution; how they have infiltrated courts and government with their true believers; how they have demonized capitalism and freedom, as if freedom is not the gift that has created the bounty of the world; how they have fostered fear that the modern world is too complex for individuals to compete without a paternalistic government; how they have allied with globalists and Islamists to cast the American middle class as the enemy of the world, not just now, but going back 400 years; how they have distorted racism and multi-culturalism into a weapons by appealing to the magnanimous nature of the American people.

Maybe enough of us are beginning to see that these are not isolated event, that there really is a master plan behind what we used to view as disjointed events, and that it is more than Marxism or elitism or even globalism. Maybe we are beginning to see that the crosshairs are settling on our foreheads.

I agree. The socialist agenda was pushed so hard. A combination of a Progressive Wet Dream Candidate and a large majority in Congress gave the criminal conspiracy an overload of confidence. Besides their crappy bills, their arrogance has annoyed the hell out of mainstream America. People are paying attention to politics like never before. The ruling class media have exposed themselves as the extremists and have lost their influence. Perfect timing for a restoration of the Constitution, free markets, and impartial taxation. Obama is Pickett’s Charge. The high tide of American socialism.

Nothing to add but very well said. I am an academician in multi-species medicine. We do have some “not-so-enlightened” cretins in this field that gulp with embarrassment at the campus elites, that mainly exist in the liberal arts.

I usually say, ‘it takes one to know one’ in a derogatory way but as with most everything you write, you’re an exception.

People constantly ask you to run for President. If you did, you’d have more reporters and lawyers at your place then grapes.

Kids between the ages of 18 and 21 (and beyond) could get Pell Grants and Stafford Loans. I learned about that 15 years ago when my kids went to college. Luckily they didn’t need loans for a small quality state school in the midwest.

Kids with no or very little assets seemed to be able to get 100 grand. It’s just like all those mortgage loans to people who had no or very little assets. If the bubble bursts …watch…they will say (leftie straw man speaking) it was those banks who deceived the children. They ensnarled innocent youth for profit. It’s THEIR fault. Those bankers. Damn bankers. Them and all their Wall Street buddies.

I hope that new rebellious youth will appear…they that rebel against the nihilistic, anything goes, godless indocrination they get now. The difference is that the communist modus operandi was used for the sedition of the late 60s and that MO is to organize.

It’s the nature of independence and self-reliance not to organize. And it’s also the nature of religious training not to yell and scream and demonize someone when he disagrees with you on social and political matters.

“What I hear coming out of Washington reminds me a lot of what I once heard coming out of the philosophy or English department. And that is a scary thing indeed.

You see, that tribe is more likely to embody the illness rather than the cure, and this time 300 million are paying the price.”

Dr. Hanson:

Scary is right. Time to grab your tool chest, load it in you pickup and take it to Washington D.C. So many things need fixing you’ll need to plan on staying awhile.

Please run for President in 2012.
We deserve better than Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour or Mitch Daniels as the RNC and DNC’s “preferred” candidates on the Republican side. Don’t let Michael Steele, Ruport Murdoch(through his Fox News puppets) and John McCain shove another weenie down our collective throats.

Now or never seems to be the fact of the matter in so far as bringing this nation back from the brink of total disaster. No more echoes of past history in 2012. It’s time for Hope and change. The real kind.
You could be “The Man.”

I took my undergraduate degree at a small state university in South Dakota. There, I experienced some of the academic wildlife you so accurately chronicle here, but thankfully, they were the exception, not the rule. Even those of my professors–and the small classes were overwhelmingly taught by professors, not graduate students–who were clearly liberal, were quietly and reasonably liberal and not prone to screaming fits and bouts of unearned theatrical superiority. I took my degree in 2.5 years. It cost about $10,000 total in the mid 1980′s. To a man and woman, my professors seemed to be genuinely nice people who understood that they were expected to actually teach and teach well first, and occasionally, publish something. And when they did publish, it was usually pretty good to excellent work. Oh, we had the oddballs, like the professor who hadn’t changed his lectures since the second edition of the text, but was using publisher generated tests from the 7th edition. Thankfully, his division secretary let me sneak into his office and find the second edition text so I could report the unfathomable differences to my classmates. She had more common sense than most professors. Actually, all of the support staff did.

I suspect that the difference between your experience and mine is that everyone there actually lived and worked in the real world, a world where blizzards regularly covered the landscape and there was no one to hire to shovel your car out-they were all too busy shoveling out their own. Most of my professors actually did repair work around their homes and did not consider themselves heroic for changing a washer in a faucet, nor would they mention it. During the various hunting seasons, many could be seen changing into their hunting attire in their offices after class and heading, happily, to their cars and pickup trucks (yes, some actually drove pickup trucks! Most four wheel drive!) where their shotguns and rifles, cleaned and well oiled, waited for them.

Indeed, some went on sabbatical to far away places, but most dressed just like everyone else in the area. The climate saw to that. They tended to make more than many in the surrounding area, but when they stopped by the local coffee shops, they were greeted by their first names and joined in with the locals in the local gossip and topics of the day. I suspect that part of their grounding was that the locals weren’t afraid to laugh at and call out particularly dopey academic theories and ideas, which the academics would sometimes sheepishly admit. Living and working among people who actually build, work and live in a harsh and unforgiving climate where driving 100 miles, passing only the occasional ranch, between towns will tend to do that. Students were respectful, but many weren’t shy about debate. That too likely kept the academics much more grounded.

There was no time for “studies” courses, for the most part. Not many of the faculty had an interest in such things, and the administration–not overburdened with assistants to the assistant to the sub dean for the administration of academic studies study–was much more interested in ensuring that the budget was balanced and that the core courses were available and staffed with full professors. My physics professor was also the national president of a vintage car club, had a solar heating business on the side, and always had grease under his fingernails. Part of his basic physics course included learning how to do basic electric house wiring, and how refrigerators and air conditioners work. We were expected to be able to explain all of that in detail and do the appropriate diagrams on the final. Those were good, useful, and interesting years.

As I did graduate work in much larger universities, I saw and experienced what you experienced. But again, at places like the University of Wyoming, the climate and culture ensured that most academics were still far more grounded in reality than in your California experience. Even though most of my professors leaned left, I could always talk with them about any topic, though they always tended to be far more interested in talking about their disciplines than about political crusades. That was indeed refreshing.

Still, I share your concern about those who try to rule us. I took my undergraduate degree in 2.5 years with a GPA of 3.89 while commuting from 50-100 miles one way each and every day and working as much as possible. But because my degree is from a small, state school, the elite would surely consider me to be far inferior to others like themselves who took 6 years to barely graduate from a “name” school while majoring in drinking and social consciousness. I wouldn’t trade my college experience for anything in the world. I wouldn’t trade the trendy, self-important, utterly devoid of common sense and practical ability and knowledge crowd in DC for a used hamburger.

Solid, non-doctrainaire education is still available. You just have to look carefully and are far more likely to find it in flyover country than on the “civilized” coasts.

I’d like to share an anecdote about my own university years, which I think perfectly illustrates Dr. Hanson’s point about technological incompetence in academics.

When I was in university, in the late 70s and early 80s, it was still permissible for students and professors to smoke in the lecture halls and small seminar rooms alike. In one of my political science courses, we had a lecturer – I believe he had his master’s but didn’t have his PhD yet – who smoked cigarettes. He always lit his cigarettes with matches and always took one or two puffs, then let the cigarette burn itself out as he talked. On one occasion, he apparently ran out of matches because I could see him searching each any every pocket without producing a match. A sympathetic student in one of the front rows wordlessly got his attention and tossed him a cheap lighter. (I was sitting very close to the lecturer so I could see this quite clearly.) The lecturer took the lighter and proceeded to use it – or rather TRY to use it! The lecturer tried and tried and tried again but, try as he might, he was unable to actually get the lighter to produce a flame! This was NOT a complicated device, quite the opposite! It was a 79 cent Bic Clic lighter with a little wheel that you rotated with a quick flick on your thumb to produce a spark that turned into a flame when the gas reached it.

The lecturer tried the lighter many times – lecturing all the while – and finally broke the flow of his lecture to say something to the effect that he wasn’t comfortable with these high-tech devices. He threw the lighter back to the student who had given it to him. Another student then threw him a book of paper matches and he was finally able to light his cigarette!

Until that moment, I would never have guessed that an adult human being of any description would be unable to work a simple lighter!

I also went to university. I went to pick up my brother. He didn’t have a car and needed a ride home.

Pretty fun eh !

Thing is I am not being funny. The whole notion that people need to go to university is elitist. They look down on those who have subsidized their education. They (university students) are the first to through a brick through my living room window.

The universities and their progressive /marxist/liberal professors (can I venture to say 90% of them) use my tax dollars to belittle people like me who choose not to get a university education.

Trades schools and colleges don’t get the same amount (percentage) of funding. Another elitist discrimination.

Well now that the university elitists have all grown up and run the government …I get to bail them out again with my tax dollars.

The government should not fund or subsidize post secondary education PERIOD. It is discriminatory.

“The government should not fund or subsidize post secondary education PERIOD. It is discriminatory.”
Yes, they should. For doctors, engineers, and others that actually provide a service to the citizenry.
Why are the taxpayers paying for courses in Drama, Dance or Art for example.
Do we really need more unemployed actors or starving artists?

that proves my point. it is discriminatory therefore the only way to solve it is no government grants.

university is expensive because it is for the most part an extension of the government. it is not competitive (it used to be) and there are ways for students to get through school besides asking taxpayers to foot the bill.

I could go on forever talking about the reasons and explanations but I wont. I will leave it as I stated. If you can make it non discriminatory then you have an arguement.

How refreshing! Thank you for an articulate summation of what is wrong with our current political climate.
I just discovered this site today recommended by a guy driving in my neighborhood picking up the recyclable dregs that the trash people would normally throw in the large truck and take to the Landfill here in Florida! Eventually, trickling down into the water table. (Recycling or composting is not an interest here, it is very sad.)

I feet so strongly about our current economic and political situation, and felt alone with my response; I am left empty after hours of “listening to FOX” shove their views of what is ‘really going on’ down our collective throats. Thank God there is another group of educated, yet well-grounded, humans that “Get It!”

You are correct, ‘Cold Weather’ makes you think, you are forced to be resourceful by the elements of nature, successfully surviving is necessitated by the Storms of winter.

“O-Vomit” makes me crazy, I cannot stand (like many others, admit to me) to watch, or even listen to him speak! Another (if he did indeed pass and truly earn any valid degrees – there is no real proof) educated IDIOT!
I am thankful that this may be a place that is alive with caring, smart, thoughtful, debating, intelligent versus intellectual people. Raised in Boulder, I had my fair share of exposure to Liberal-minded people, students, faculty, and parents. Luckily, I had a Father who was a lot wiser and smarter than any of them; he handed me books, a dictionary, and told me to “look it up” anytime I had a query. That is the equivalent of ‘teaching one to fish versus handing them a fish’.
We are a Nation of instant gratification, add water & stir; throw it away with the tags still on it unused. Drunk on inflated self-importance laced with coke swilling, coke snorting, fake boobs, everything – fake head to toe; self-mutilation with piercings, tattoos, dyed/fried hair of every ugly color imaginable, and underneath it all is a hollow human. All are truly fake, vacuous with their attitudes of entitlement and arrogance.

Versus, the wonderful kids that have gone off to fight the ‘Damn Wars’, coming back in body bags, or mutilated for life with legs, arms, eyes, or half their brain gone. There are over 45,000 of them, from our most recent wars, they suffer from PST, suicide tendencies, and more… Ours to care for the next 30-40 years. We do not acknowledge this group as a Nation, at all, we ignore this travesty. When was the last time you heard about them? Or even the first time? They are ignored much like the Weather in Canada or Mexico is never reported, like it is non-existent. More is made over some idiot Hollowood Cella-brittie…(on purpose, look it up!) What a waste, the more I see of them, the less I intend to support any of their beliefs or Movies.

Where are our good values, our spiritual qualities, and our Moral Outrage of what has happened to our Country, our society, and our people??? Is Glenn Beck the only one who speaks out? Frankly, I want to see more people step forward, not just a ‘FOX-person’, surely there are other people with a passion for our Country, and what we use to stand for. Or are they afraid? Afraid of the consequences of speaking out?
We are degraded as a Nation, the current occupant of the Office of President is a reflection, of that. I firmly believe we should have a person in that office that has been successful in the military for several years (4-30), ran a business, is a good God fearing family person, and stands for all of our values; a person whom we have Elected, who is engaged with our country’s values, and employed to do so.

Only two more months for our next response, and then 24 months later we have another opportunity to make this right, to continue making the turning point for this Country – Circle the Wagons! Why do you think so many people want into our Country? With the sieve that we call the Border they are managing very well at our peril.

The “Office of President” is a Privilege not a Right! It is not to be misused, or manipulated for one’s personal agendas; it is understood that it is to be occupied for the “Betterment of All” not a chosen few.

It is our White House, Our Capitol Building, Our Freedoms, Our Constitution, and our lives depend on us defending and protecting those facts; that we embrace and stand for these values wholeheartedly, not numbly or abstractly. We need action, not rhetoric!
God forbid we do otherwise!

I have a true story which almost nobody believes. While I was working as a temp on Wall Street, one of my managers turned out to be a friendly guy who used to teach at the university. I asked him, innocently, how he could have abandoned the peaceful Groves of Academic for the Dog-Eat-Dog world of Big Business.

He laughed his head off, and explained that campus politics were so much worse than business matters that it was difficult to compare them.

I remember when academia nosed its way into forestry. I had a reforestation contract with BC Timber Co. in the upper Nass Valley not far from SE Alaska. The experienced forester I had worked with before was suddenly low man on the totem pole. Because of family responsibilities he hadn’t gone back to school and gotten certified as this new category called Professional Forester. Instead I had to deal with two rookies who were suspicious of me because I was a capitalist exploiting the hard work of 40 treeplanters. No telling what I might try to get away with. The first day on the cut block I covered a large cache of tree boxes with a silvicool tarp, a giant space blanket. The Native lady forester, who had had the Indian educated out of her, jumped out of her truck with a thermometer and poked the spiked bottom into a box of trees with an air of triumph. She had me now! And so disappointed when the trees proved to be nice and cool. All that money spent at UBC and no one ever told her how to keep trees cool on the work site. One day the reefer trailer was out of Sitka spruce. All the nursery’s fault, they declared. The old forester told me the two rookies had forgotten to order the right balance of species. No course on restocking at UBC. That’s how it went. The real forester even warned me when he saw the rookies were planning to cheat me. The last year I supervised a crew the college dementia had grown to where they were requiring hard hats–on hundreds of open hectares, where the trees were no longer standing. I think I got out at the right time.

A friend of mine who grew up on a farm was assigned to teach a 4AM class, there were no other slots available. On the first day of class he was the only one to show up. Needless to say, the class was canceled shortly after.

I remember a Political Science seminar that I took one term. The classes were at 9:30 AM, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and lasted an hour. It was a small class with maybe 30-40 students in it and was held in a seminar room set up with long tables. There was one student who inevitably came in five to ten minutes late every single time; since he was last to arrive, he always ended up in the very first row, just a few feet from the professor. That same student immediately put his head down on the table and went to sleep for the duration of the lecture. He even snored sometimes. The professor just shrugged and carried on…..

I can honestly say I never had an 8 am class, but I had an 8:30 or 9 am class every single semester, and there was no way to avoid it. Either the classes were only offered at that time, or the other section conflicted with something else that was inflexible.

This article hits close to home for me. My step father was a Jr. College Prof and to this day has got the same dementia towards common sense. There is no sense in attempting to discuss anything relevant. The Clinton and Obama Bios on his top shelf are there merely to show his credentials to all. Nary a page has been read in any of them. I wouldn’t lend him a toothbrush much less a pick-up truck.

Please don’t defame arugula, after all it is a food, however academia is no longer a food for the mind but a poison. There is however some push back. A large number of vets are now in college and then are not uninformed 18 year old idealists. I believe there is a ex-Special Forces guy at Harvard Law which must have Harvard’s Admin. wetting their collective shorts. The “elite schools” is a term that should be used loosely. Social science should be in the curriculum next to witchcraft and reading chicken entrails. Classics, literature and history are fine topics for personal enjoyment and developing a life long interest, but have very few skills that translate well into earning a living. Teaching can, and should be a very good way to earn a living, but indoctrination as practice currently in many so called institutions of higher learning should be treated like witch craft and practitioners should be publicly flogged, we verbally flogged anyway.

Oh hell yes, this is all terribly familiar. As a student, I once watched two notable professors of Astronomy and Physics almost come to blows in the hallway one day. One had broken into the computer of the other, and had passed off the work pilfered as his own.

And the thing that really got me was, half of the department were actually *defending* the thief.

Thank God for a rural life – I’m a musician, and you find the same intellectualizing about unknowns in most fields unconnected with reality. Sort of explains why liberalism and cities go together.

Here in my rural valley, the contrast between the artsy/crafty, the education people, etc. and the ag people is huge. The artsy/education types can’t figure out why the ag people don’t participate in the same events – great events promoting awareness of whatever, or sharing, or social responsibility. They have trouble grasping that the cattle and crops don’t get holidays.

The ag people don’t often show up at my concerts, but at least I know they are exhausted and have to get up early in the morning to do it all again. I’m kind of an alien in the art camp.

This is a bit one-sided, not that I expect a fuller explanation of either the ag or business side to be presented on this blog. Each area has their wackadoodles, and believe me ag aren’t hardly the ones full of common sense and decency. Not by a longshot. In fact, they can often mirror the arrogance and ignorance described here as being part and parcel to academia. Sure there are jerks and know-nothings in academia, but they sure aren’t exclusive to academia.

Interesting comment. In my part of the country, I’m seeing many little towns being either “invaded” or “reinvigorated” by artsy city folk. Seems to be a trend: Move into a small, rural town with a struggling business district and put in some cafes, boutiques, New Age crystal shops, and maybe a little theatre. Places the rural locals a) couldn’t afford and b) wouldn’t go to even if they could.

Good article. Yet I am committed to teaching, and it is heartbreaking. Not the students, but the other teachers and administrators.

The good professor probably knows the story of how Peter the Great upgraded the officer corps of his army: He sent many talented young men to England, Germany and France. When he had enough of them trained up, the new officers invited the old to dinner. At the end of dinner they shot the old guard. He was not very subtle, but he was effective.

Do you believe that Europe is surrendering without a fight to Islamic invaders?
I witnessed a similar surrender at a California university some years ago.

It was at the time of the first wave of affirmative action enrollments. Back then, I was a teaching assistant in the basic Philosophy course. On the first day of class, a student took me aside. Explaining that he needed the degree so that he could be a political leader for “la raza”, he asked that I promise him a good grade although he would be too busy to do the course work. I assured him that I was the hardest grader on campus, and he buzzed off in search of a yes answer from someone else.
On my way to lunch, I came to the circle where many of the main paths on campus converged. A group of black students dressed in ghetto fashions had taken to gambling with coins on the sidewalk at noon, blocking foot traffic at the busiest time of day. As usual, everyone, distinguished professors and undergraduates alike, went around them by walking on the grass. No one protested or even made a comment about what was happening.
Right then I believed I saw the future of the Univerity.

I believe that I was a witness to a great tragedy, the wasting of a great tradition of teaching and learning built up over centuries of effort.
I’m with proreason (#7 above). It is certain that much has been thrown away already and that we are at risk of even more of what makes America America being thrown away.

There are few greater pleasures on the internet than reading an impassioned, on the mark, rant by a truly great thinker and writer. Thanks, once again.

The recent oil-spill afforded a good example of the self-righteous outrage by the academic elite at the greedy, unprincipled, incompetent behavior of an industrial business, a well-managed company staffed by highly experienced specialists, performing in extremely difficult circumstances largely necessitated by the same elitists, which met with misfortune. Elitists who seized the political opportunity to harass free enterprise while going into a pathetically ineffectual 100-day dither and using the mishap as an excuse to further impede efforts to increase our energy resources.

Of course, your rant is also applicable to the arrogantly ignorant field of Pulitzer-prize-obsessed “journalism”,

I enjoyed reading your post. It was a hoot, with insight galore.
It seems to me, for quite a time now, that too many people are being educated beyond their level of intelligence.
This has produced a large number of so-called experts who dash off to mess up as much as they can. They are allowed to do this mess without having any wisdom at all. Nor are there any requirements or track records to demostrate they have at least a minimum of wisdom.
For these fools with degrees, it is perfectly ok to just experiement with others. They can not even judge the future consequences of these experiments.
So the looney left continues to go about, in its self preocupied daze always knowing better.
Might I suggest…..some time out?

“Raisin Plants” really? I can’t think of a time I didn’t know raisins were dried grapes. Maybe I learned it in 1st grade or kindergarten. I remember studying the very basics of farming in my urban elementary school. It makes me wonder where the academic elites come from. Are they born in hermitically sealed nurseries and kept sheltered through their whole lives from any of the most basic realities of ordinary existence? That certainly would explain President Obama. It’s the only thing that can explain President Obama.

A lonely fellow decides to buy a talking parrot. He enters a pet shop and sees a nice parrot and asks the price. “That parrot goes for $1000!”. “And what does he do?” “He not only speaks english, but german and dutch too.” “hmmm. How about that other handsome one there?” “Ahhh a nice choice. He speaks english and romance languages, perfect french, spanish and lovely italian. He goes for $1700.” “And that strange little parrot up there?” “He goes for $3000!” “Wow! He must be something special. What does he do?” “Well, to tell you the truth I never heard him say anything, but… the other two call him professor.”

VDH:
“You see, that tribe is more likely to embody the illness rather than the cure, and this time 300 million are paying the price.”
Oh that’s good! The antidote of course is the truth, embodied in people like you, thank God.
I like the Land Rover/Wilderness Clothes picture; ‘yes at any moment I (my imaginary hero self) may be called upon to save the world from a Capitalist and I can role play this scene everyday in front of my captive audience.’
Everyone in the Obama administration seems to see the imagined in place of reality.
One day soon we will see the coward behind it all more clearly, a despicable type of person and we will wonder why we listened in the first place instead of finding a cure.
Great words. Thanks.

I do not believe there is anything new about the phenomenon you describe. Fifty-plus years ago my family moved from the sticks into the booming metropolis of Defiance, Ohio. The height of humor in freshman Latin class was to greet each other with a hearty “Salve, agricola!” Yes, this was an insult.

I’ve seen a bit of the world since then. If you teach at Hillsdale you probably have some idea of where and what Defiance is. Isn’t irony delicious?

Incidentally, my uncle Merritt Greene wrote a couple historical novels about Baw Beese that were in the Hillsdale curriculum. He was also a conservative farmer. By conservative I mean he favored the ants over the grasshoppers.

Your rant is excellent, Dr. Hanson. Glenn Reynold’s interview with someone at the American Enterprise Institute talks specifically about the education bubble. The solution? Poverty. I agree. However, it has also occurred to me that unemployed, not-too-bright, poorly educated ex-professors can do a lot of harm too. The 1930s Okies at least knew how to keep a broken down truck going over the then dirt roads towards California. The future tribe of unemployed, given that the dole will be cut back, are going to be a nasty crowd, indeed.

I respectfully disagree – discounting the noise they’ll make in the process, of course – but these silly folk are unable to make fire, make food, make work or make do. The only thing they can make is water, and that will not be enough to cause them to survive. Agree they will be “nasty” and it will not be a pretty picture, but the duration should be mercifully brief. I will try to stand it.

“I respectfully disagree – discounting the noise they’ll make in the process, of course – but these silly folk are unable to make fire, make food, make work or make do. The only thing they can make is water, and that will not be enough to cause them to survive. Agree they will be “nasty” and it will not be a pretty picture, but the duration should be mercifully brief. I will try to stand it.”

Not to mention that the majority of them are anti gun, so they won’t even be able to take what they need.
No need to sweat the small stuff.

Colleges now churn out kids who have no idea of why the US is different from other countries (except that we have guns, private property, less vacation time, lower taxes and a mass of “ignorant” voters, all of which are castigated as prof of our backwardness).

These smart and good kids have been systematically severed from our history. They know of Squanto and dozens of other people stuffed into history books, but very little if any of Alexander Hamilton, John Locke, Winston Churchill or Theodore Rosoevelt, unless it is to degrade them for being products of their time.

They all know that jefferson may have slept with his slave, but almost nothing about what Jefferson stood for. Even Lincoln is dismsised as a corner cutter by professors who never led a department much less a nation.

This syndrome has even infected law schools, where the disdain of law “faculty” for actual lawyers and judges has never been greater. It was noticeable in the late 70′s but is much worse now. Law review articles are praiseworthy only to the extent they are useless. Law professors have not practiced much and more and more think having a Ph.D in some distantly related field is more important than practing law. Actual practice is actually a strike against you. Does this matter? Yes if working lawyers that understand the immense burden new laws put on people and businesses are important. Yes if lawyers that realize how oppressive government agencies can be are crucial.

How to change it?

Academics have proven to be poor guardians of our colleges and professional schools, which are now more costly, useless and remote from the real world than ever before. I cannot imagine entrusting actual functining parts of the country to them.

Aw, c’mon Prof, cut the academics some slack. After all, these are men and women whose sphere of action is the mind, the arena of ideas. Nuance is their game. Gravitas is their fame. And all that other bullshit that passes for intellectual activity. The products of their labors are several generations of graduates who cannot speak coherently, perform simple mathematical operations, and whose concept of history extends back two years at best. This, along with the burgeoning tort industry, accounts for the mushrooming profusion of warnings and safety tips found on even the most mundane articles. Such as ‘do not bend over the gas grill when igniting’. Coming soon? ‘Remove before driveing’ in large letters on the back of dashboard sun deflectors. Bet on it.

Sadly, I believe that those folks will take your observations as a compliment. If you want to see really, I mean really, I mean REALLY awful examples, I suggest education departments. (I remember one class in my Ed Masters program. We were discussing education history, etc., and the subject of Martin Luther came up. Out of a class of 30, I swear as the sun rises in the east, that I alone knew he was a 16h century monk. Most thought the professor had left of “King Jr.” ) My ed profs were either dumber than a stump or stupider than a stone. I’ll let you make the final call, but you needn’t wonder about the current state of public education. I’m almost embarrassed to say I have an MA in Ed.!!

Also my experience especially in the Liberal Arts faculty. The Natual Science faculty generally are more down to earth especially if one has to eventually bend something.
Too, I experienced somewhat the same culture while a Federal civil servant, especially from the political appointees.

Aw, c’mon Prof, cut the academics some slack. After all, these are men and women whose sphere of action is the mind, the arena of ideas. Nuance is their game. Gravitas is their fame. And all that other bullshit that passes for intellectual activity. The products of their labors are several generations of graduates who cannot speak coherently, perform simple mathematical operations, and whose concept of history extends back two years at best. This, along with the burgeoning tort industry, accounts for the mushrooming profusion of warnings and safety tips found on even the most mundane articles. Such as ‘do not bend over the gas grill when igniting’. Coming soon? ‘Remove before driving’ in large letters on the back of dashboard sun deflectors. Bet on it.

It’s “those who can, do. Those who can’t,teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.” All others go to schools of Journalism. The academics hate for the military is an example of moral and physical cowardice. They look at the soldiers and see how much they are left wanting in courage. It has nothing to do with all the excuses they make.

I have been reading Dr. Hanson online and all of his books since I discovered him two years ago when using his book The Soul of Battle (my prerogative to chose reference materials) in a sophomore English class themed in war. The English professor was a Jane Fonda liberal and used her position as far as possible to crush any dissenting arguments. Fortunately, a Marine just returned from Iraq was taking the same class with me. I never before realized how safe you can feel when the USMC has got your back. It seems that the two of us were the only students not afraid to challenge Professor Wiggle Your Hips; but challenge we did and I’d venture to say won our arguments. She could not, not give us the 4.0 that we earned! It wouldn’t look too good. At the end of the quarter we were out there shaking hands and high-fiving. You never know what you can get away with in even the most politically correct classes until you get your guts together, take the plunge, and utilize Victor Davis Hanson’s books! BTW, the best way to address a Professor Wiggly type is to use their own terminology. Academics apparently have no clue that form need not follow liberal function.

I never before realized how safe you can feel when the USMC has got your back.

It’s hard to think of something which is more universally true. Anecdote: I work with a bunch of ex-military folks, and we hired a fellow who was fresh out of the USMC. Scheduling wasn’t permitting us to give him the training for his regular job for a few weeks, so we tossed him a couple of problems that we had been knawing on unsuccessfully for a while (and on which we had pretty much given up). About two weeks later he came up with a solution that had eluded the rest of us. I continued giving him nigh-impossible tasks during his tenure with us, and darn straight he accomplished a fair number of them.

50 years ago, I was an undergraduate and spent quite a bit of time taking English Literature courses. The reason was that I had come back to school from an engineering job to complete pre-med. When I went to the student loan office, I was told that pre-meds were not eligible for loans. The nice lady at the office explained that most of us didn’t get into medical school anyway.

I left and returned later in the day to apply again. I put down my major as English Literature and got the loan. I took pre-med courses as electives. I was very impressed with my English instructors, all professors, unlike my youngest daughter’s recent experience where her instructors were all grad students. One professor told us how he had taken a trip as the sole passenger on a tramp steamer so he could get through Spenser’s “The Fairie Queen.” He remains my favorite professor 49 years later although I’m sure he would never dream so. Anyone who has ever tried to read Spenser’s poem will understand.

It is a shame that my five children missed the education I had. My oldest is 45 and he came closest. I have watched it deteriorate ever since.

As a humanities professor I have to say I recognize all too much of what was described. I’m currently at a religious school (not my religion) and so the difficulties come from the other direction, but I saw a whole lot of this at UVA and Vanderbilt. We think we are a lot smarter than we are. I wonder if I should stay in academia, but I love teaching.

I’ve had long experience at land grant universities – mostly in agriculture/life sciences, a bit in engineering. This interesting rant really doesn’t describe the faculty I know and have worked with for decades. You are really not describing the faculty I know in the STEM fields – maybe it describes the arts and humanities – especially in Calif. and the Duke English dept under Fish. Perhaps there is a “Two Cultures” difference?

As an academic administrator, I have met all of the types you mention (apart from the murderer). But still – academia just isn’t as bad as you suggest. Most (not all) of my colleagues really do want to do right by their students. Like you, they love teaching and they take it very seriously. They work very hard at it and at the end of the day really are tired and exhausted. They don’t work because of external pressure – as you say, they are tenured – but because they set themselves high standards.

You and I would agree with many of the solutions to the problems of higher education. Tenure and no mandatory retirement age would be at the top of my list of evils. Too much state funding is surely another problem. But to tar everybody with the same brush is surely not fair to the many college professors who really try to do right.

The fact is that so many university instructors, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, are otherwise barely employable. Yet despite their professed disdain for lucre, they tend to live remarkably well. Compare the modest dwelling of mathematician Robert Nash in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” with, say, the million dollar plus mansions that surround American University Park in Washington.

I only regret that Dr. Hanson didn’t fully extend this “ruled by professors” theme to today’s Washington where we find an administration run by lawyers, university professors, and folks from the non-profit world. Almost none have built or run a business, or made a payroll. Absent a connection to government as employer or provider of largesse, directly or indirectly, they’d have little experience to speak of.

And one more suspicion, if I might be indulged. Hanson notes, “Gas-guzzling Yukons were bad; gas-guzzling Land Cruisers weirdly OK.” Not so weird, really. Think back to Ralph Nader, who made his name by trashing US-made Corvair, but said little about the more rollover-prone (German) Volkswagen. The Yukon is an American brand; the Land Cruiser is not.

I read Ludwig Von Mises essay “The Anti-capitalistic Mentality” today. The VDH essay fits right in with that essay. Those who cannot actually perform a normal every day task, really have no business being in government. If you don’t know what it takes to start and run a business, it is a very bad idea for you to try to regulate business. It gets us into situations where there are no jobs. Oh, wait……

Now the twitedness is found in the High Schools also. A few years ago a Techie I knew was teaching Micro Soft Networking course at a high school. One of the teachers asked why he was so strict about getting work turned in at the required time. He asked what do you think would happen in the commercial world if you missed a dead line. She said “Wouldn’t they just reschedule?”

When I was an undergraduate (25+ years ago), I noticed that the status and arrogance of professors and students was inversely proportional to the difficulty of their majors. Liberal Arts majors were snobs, business/law majors had an attitude. Pre-Med and hard science people were OK.

Engineers, of course, were the lowest of the low socially. But we had jobs when we graduated. And we know how a compressor works.

“The university runs like a 13th-century church in which the heliocentric maverick is a mortal sinner.”-VDH

And which church would that be? Heliocentrism was never a mortal sin in the Christian churches of that time (protestantism not having been invented yet) and the worship spaces of Muslims are called mosques, not churches.

I thought the reference quite clear. All sorts of churches worshiping Christ existed in that period, spread from Persia to England and the North to the Horn of Africa. The common view everything revolved around Earth was de rigueur for up-and-coming clerics of all persuasions in those times, and the careers of those expressing countervailing opinions would have mortally suffered, in my view, so point taken.

We can surmise one other thing. He would not sully himself by using the saw to fell, limb and buck a couple of small tress to clean it. Had he done that, how could he hold his head up in the faculty lounge?

A resolution of academic inefficiency and ineffectiveness is at hand and gaining
traction: Internet learning. Achieve at your own pace for little finance.
Schumpterism to the core! Current educational institutions will die by their own
hand. Teaching is a “profession” that is an anachronism of the middle ages.
Like sports I can train people, like retirees, to teach effectively to kids in less than
six months. methods have been established

Unfortunately, internet learning can never do anything beyond communicating knowledge, and can never supplant the fundamental value of true academic teaching: beyond dispensing knowledge, the example of sound reasoning, the dialog of expression, and the delight of involvement in intelligent and principled debate. As with journalism, what is needed is the purging of the promulgation of propaganda.

I will confirm: Never lend anything to an academic. I once did and had the audacity to ask for it back many months later. My academic friend became almost enraged and claimed I gave it to him. I was dumb struck. He still has it.

I have also found that many professional teachers have a single disinterest in learning. Perhaps, they feel they already know it all. It’s a very odd thing.

In private business, I have to learn new things all the time, use them and put them into practice.

I heartily agree about Education degrees. My time spent getting a Master’s in ESL was among the worst of my educational life. PC thought was all the rage. Many Spanish-speaking teachers who were becoming certified to be bilingual instructors had terrible English. Political activism was the focus. After I got my degree, I, who had always loved school and learning, swore NEVER to subject myself to such garbage ever again. It was so intellectually dishonest that it was intolerable.

Add Journalists to academics and you have a class that is rapidly approaching Louis XVI-Marie Antoinette status, both in power and in the contempt a vast majority of people feel for them. Add tort lawyers and it’s even closer.

“On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men…”

I went back to school after I retired and got 3 master’s degrees in the liberal arts after a lifetime in business. I also taught as an adjunct faculty member (less than minimum wage slave).

Why anyone would listen to the pronouncement of a liberal arts PH.D. or tenured professor on the subject of a blow-out preventer accident in mile deep water or man-caused global warming is beyond me.

They are dear people, very smart in their specialties, and knowledge is a worthwhile thing to have and pass on to those who are interested–but for God’s sake don’t give them the status of Olympic Gods. With the exception of those in technical fields like engineering, medicine, etc. most would starve to death outside the schoolroom.

Remember the ole saying, “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.” Not sure who this is
attributed to but this person was wise.

George Ordineon Dean of UC Berkeley once said and I paraphrase. I must be nice to my “A” students
because someday they will be my professors and department heads. But I especially need to be nice to
my “C” students because someday I am going to need them to build me a new building on campus.

Quote is from G Bernard Shaw’s Play “Man and Superman”. In the play, John Tanner – a political activist in the early 20th Century – published a booklet “The Revolutionary’s Handbook” in which this quote first appears.

Back in the early 90s, I sat in on a faculty meeting at which two professors got into a protracted squabble over who deserved to get the more important office with two windows, as opposed to the less important office with only one window. Trust me, it was every bit as childish as it sounds. My previously solid respect for university professors began its inevitable decline on that day.

“We, of course, to paraphrase Barack Obama, out of altruism had passed on all those easy avenues of getting rich (identifying a Latin gerundive or an under-appreciated 19th suffragette being far more difficult than cracking open someone’s brain or building a shopping center).”

As much as I enjoy reading your essays, one remark, Dr. Hanson. Steven Chu worked for Bell Labs, then at Stanford, and then was a director of the Lawrence Berkeley lab. In addition to being one of the greatest experimental physicists alive (best and brightest), who make the US research science the best in the world, he is an apt administrator and one of those who could have made a brilliant industrial career.
In general, it would appear that the science and engineering faculty in research universities are a bit different breed (and one you might be less familiar with) than the faculty in arts and humanities.

I left a tenured position at a small (and moonbatty) college about 20 years ago so I could stay home and raise my kids. I have since then been a part-time lecturer at several schools. Your basic description of faculty attitudes holds true, to one extent or another, in all of them.

I especially loved your observation about tenured professors never picking up a check. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had coffee with one them and they stiff me with the tab. (This often happens after they have have made a point sometime during the rendezvous of pitying my slave wages and decrying the injustice!)

Reminds me of the time in the 60′s which a group of female college students, ready to help the needy and oppressed, had a bit of a navigational problem and ended up in our neighborhood instead of the slum that literally lay over the next hill.

Our neighborhood, one of owner occupied trim little homes on nice lots, 2 parent families, most with only the man working, at least 1 and usually 2 cars per family, and kids who thought that things were fairly nice but had no idea that they were living in a pretty good definition of heaven. Our neighboorhood, one of policemen, mechanics, and officeworkers, none of whom were on any form of public assistance.

The students went door to door, giving and receiving bewildered looks as they offered to help the poor downtrodden residents. Clearly, they had never been to a real slum, and I suppose that our neighborhood, which lacked swimming pools (we had a creek to play in) and which mainly featured clotheslines instead of dryers for laundry, seemed pretty slummish to them.

Academia wandered off course, met the real world, and came away bewildered. And the process continues.

Venkman: Einstein did his best stuff when he was working as a patent clerk!
Stantz: You know how much a patent clerk earns? Personally, I liked the University; they gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there. I’ve worked in the private sector. [winces] They expect results…

This isn’t the first time. The Kennedy administration was filled with academics, especially from Hahvahd. The big exception was Robert McNamara, the former Ford Motor Company CEO, who made the idiotic claim (still taught in some business schools) that a good CEO can run any company, even if he knows nothing about its products or services. McNamara proved himself wrong by running the Defense Department into the ground. Kennedy’s academics gave us numerous debacles: the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the space race, the missile gap-driven ICBM race, and deeper involvment in Southeast Asia. Those academics also paved the way for Johnson’s “Great Society” nanny state, debt-inducer programs.

Obama will outdo FDR, JFK, and LBJ combined in regards to wasteful federal spending, increased nanny statism, and a continued was with no definable end point. (What will it take before we are done in Afghanistan?)

(Wait reader: you ask, well, smarty-pants Mr. Hanson, how exactly did a supposedly inept professor learn how to chain saw someone’s head off? I confess, I wonder about that still.)
He probably had the victim start it for him.

and his bloody artistic apotheosis and apologetics for dictatorship of the proletariat etc

the Mexican revolution war was as bloody as any marxist enterprise of later modernism….

== =

in my snark-elite world, one was a combat CB, another has fixed motorcycles, i have ridden cross country on two wheels and risked and saved my life based on my ability to maintain my 60mph machine and “stayin’ alive” as the Bee Gees told us in song

=

another does not quite open heads but every other part of the body and we have two other MDs here, one a head opener, who have worked with mortality

fighting the devil for souls and lives and winning or at least holding back the hordes of the night

=

even so, this article is timely to me because in my defense and beyond that admiration for sarah palin –i am still left without factual rebuttal that she is not an intellectual

except that as of a few day ago, in my eternal internal dialogue as i try out one after another line of argument/ rhetoric/ articulation as Movement Theoretician and Orthodoxy Ideologue (self-appointed ) of the Right,

i had a eureka/ aha phenomenon,. more modestly called ‘ a light bulb moment’

of the form

“would we really want a government by people who learned how to govern, out of a book?!”

readers?

==
we may hold aside ‘zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ as too complex for a bumper sticker sound byte of very troubled man

in his actual and metaphorical and familial odyssey through madness and machinery and montana and purgation and purification through (help me here, ‘praxis’)

““Matt Crawford’s remarkable book on the morality and metaphysics of the repairman looks into the reality of practical activity. It is a superb combination of testimony and reflection, and you can’t put it down.”
—Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University
From the book jacket:

A philosopher / mechanic destroys the pretensions of the high-prestige workplace and makes an irresistible case for working with one’s hands.”

= =

camille paglia, whom i adore, who else can work ‘chthonic’ into a sentence three times in one paragraph without boring or intimidating the reader or activating ones own reverse snobbery …

“Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands—ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children.”

I love Days and Works and have been a fan for a very long time. On this topic, however, I think you have it bass-ackwards. The problem isn’t cowardice, it is bullying. I had my share of conflicts with high school teachers, but they are almost all constrained by the nature of testing in the secondary schools. It is very difficult to punish unlike thinkers with true-false, multiple choice exams. All that changes in college, with grading based on term papers, essay exams and contributions to classroom discussions. At the college level, take on step off the reservation and you’ll pay a price.

The problem is even worse in grad school. Write a politically unacceptable paper, no matter how well researched and documented, and you’ll never get that professor to sit on your committee. Write enough of them, you’ll have no committee and they’ll usher you out the door with an MA, perhaps to find a junior college teaching position, if you are lucky. It doesn’t take a great intellect to figure out that the price to be paid for that college professorship you have been dreaming of since middle school is a less honest but more strategic approach to scholarship. A similar process is repeated as you grovel for that tenured position. At some point during this process, you lose yourself and become one of the bullies. It is that simple.

I have three close friends who lost themselves that way, two of whom went on to become tenured academics; I, on the other hand, couldn’t find that JC teaching position. We all make choices. I’m not sure mine was the right one.

I have a cold hearted solution to our current plague of academics. I say this because I live in a town where tenure is godhood and the waiters have masters degrees in post feminist anthropology.
The upcoming congress could simply forbid tax payer dollars from going to liberal arts. No Pell Grants unless you are in a useful degree plan.
It could be formulated simply. If the total cost of your student loans exceeds the amount of money you can expect to make in your first your doing X, then you shouldn’t get that degree, and we shouldn’t pay for it.

There are plenty of degrees for useful jobs: Doctors, engineers, architects, programmers. All of the money that would have went to gift us with academics or worse, lawyers, could be shifted towards these useful degrees and towards useful certifications.
Think about it. Which is more useful; the post feminist anthropology degree or a Cisco certification?

baal wrote : “All of the money that would have went to gift us with academics or worse, lawyers,…”

Well, an English teacher might have been able to help you with “would have gone” instead of “would have went.” Hey, at least you did not write “would OF went.” ;-) Grammar IS practical, to the extent that it helps in composition anyway. Of course, English teachers have to know it to be able to teach it, and I will grant you that more should know it. It has fallen out of favor, but needs to come back.
Your formula for the loan being determined by the salary depends on being able to GET a job, no matter what your field is. Today’s newspaper informs me that the government is cracking down on loans to students who are taking these IT courses etc offered by for-profits which have sprung up. Subsequent jobs and subsequent repayment of loans have NOT been forthcoming.

THANK YOU for saying that they envy some of us!! That made my day because, in a past life, I had to cope with a number of the professors you mention and without exception they ALL were convinced they were simply “born better” than EVERYONE else. My experience of them, however, was that they LOVED money and all the images of wealth. It is very, very gratifying to know that they were in fact jealous of me!!!! Right on!!

Well, think how far academia at Yale has come since 1773 per the editor’s introduction in Muhammad The Banned Images. Yale Press banned the Muhammed cartoon images. By stark contrast, “In 1773, at the age of 18, Nathan Hale graduated with first-class honors from Yale College. Three years later, he was hanged by the British for defending America’s nascent freedoms, including free speech and freedom of the press. At his hanging he spoke the immortal words: ‘I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.’ “

You and I both know that Hoover Sr. Fellows like Barry, Terry and BDM are as serious about the Academy as they are about the Institution. In fact, in my experience, PoliSci Depts. abound with very smart and dedicated scholars and teachers. While it is true that some spend much of their time arguing abstruse academic points, most also like to think that there work is policy relevant… if only the policy-wonks could be bothered to learn how to read a regression table or a formal proof (both crucially useful skills, I believe; a point upon which I suspect we differ). Even those who are on the left-of-center, as are most in the Stanford PoliSci Dept., Steve Krasner aside, are generally skilled and genuine thinkers and scholars.

While what you say may be true of English Depts., (and Sociology, Anthropology and, most unfortunately, History), please do not do us the disservice of lumping all in the academy together–it is prejudicial and betrays a lack of considered thought that I do not believe you hold generally. Political Science Departments and Econ. Departments remain a cut above and although I may be a conservative while most therein are not, not only do I feel welcome and at home in these environs, but I am loath to see these individuals (again, even the liberal amongst them) tarred with so broad a brush.

At bottom, as much as I enjoy PJM and your columns therein, I find the latest turn against the academy to be distressing. CERTAINLY school is getting (too?) expensive… though as the provision of public goods is a well-known market failure, perhaps you would countenance some government “intervention” here to lighten the load (a topic I rarely if ever see addressed here in PJM). CERTAINLY, there are many, too many, malcontents, incompetents and leeches and producers of un-knowledge found within hallowed halls; but so too are found those who are (at least in prospect) their antidote; the latter remain our foremost producers of knowledge, practical as well as theoretical (as “theory” is merely the application of our knowledge from past experience to problems for which we lack the knowledge to properly judge, I reject the dichotomy between “applied” and “theoretical” as well—-though that remains a topic of another time). CERTAINLY, the Academy has become a liberal ghetto, but liberalism is not the same as radicalism, as a trip over to Encina Hall would show you.

When it comes to Higher Education, I caution you and PJM to not throw out the baby with the bathwater and to be very careful and discerning when selecting the targets of your disapproval.

Bobdog I was wondering when or if anybody would disagree with VDH’s spot-on charges. One has arrived finally, yet I’m almost suspicious of satire with your post.

The tipoff happens at the start with “You and I both know that Hoover Sr. Fellows like Barry, Terry and BDM are as serious about the Academy as they are about the Institution.” Please hand me a barf bag while you namedrop manufactured chums to impress the plebians while stalling for something meaningful to say.

I had no doubt that I was reading an academic’s work because of the ornamented, heavy style totally devoid of intent, passion or point. Flowery words and clever phrases strung together that search desperately for something to actually communicate. An empty vessel with all the right decorations.

There is no argument or rebuttal presented, or even a strong opinion like those others here who have said so much more with so much less.

You close with a patronizing “I caution you” admonition towards VDH. Well Bob, then let the 74 previous commenters indicate where caution should be.

I do not disagree with Professor Hansen, per se. Indeed, as a peripheral member of the Academy, I have seen, read and heard far more than my fair share of exactly the sorts of incidents about which he writes. Rather I argue that the (sometimes fair) points he makes still paint with far too wide a brush. As I said previously, “While what [Hansen says] may be true of English Depts., (and Sociology, Anthropology and, most unfortunately, History), please do not do us the disservice of lumping all in the academy together.”

Furthermore, those Hoover Fellows are people that I know well (Terry Moe has been a particularly good friend to me)… and know to be both “sane,” per Professor Hanson and, actually, quite conservative, if that would make you feel any better. I do not know Professor Hanson or those with whom he has become acquainted but, as he is at Hoover, I suspect that he knows them as well. If he does, once again, to tar them with the same brush as he does those from, say, the English Studies Dept. is both unfair and unwise.

Unfair should be self-evident. Unwise insofar as it encourages those who know no better to immediately indulge in knee-jerk chauvinism (anti-elite elitism?) when one goes so far as to use the English language as it was intended… as do you, Air2air. Doing so endangers the creation and custodianship of knowledge as well as the discourse from which we might otherwise all profit; it is, in fact, the flip-side of the debased coin of the Progressives’ calling their interlocutors racists, fascists, Nazis, etc., in place of reasoned argument. Those that stand contrary to knowledge, whether one is from either the left or the right threaten to impoverish us all.

In closing, I have made no “rebuttal” because I do not see points amongst those made by Professor Hansen to rebut. Point-for-point, I do indeed believe that he is “spot on,” as you say, in more cases than not. On the other hand, I have “argued” that broad anti-intellectualism is unwise as, in the hands of those so easily offended, it gives rise to the sort of Year-Zero thinking that can affect both those on the left and the right—and thus overwhelming the real contributions to knowledge made by the few conservatives within the Ivory Tower AS WELL AS by those “sane” liberals, like many that you will find in departments of Political Science and Econ., again, as I argued last time.

Dr. Hanson,
Had any of my college professors been like you, I would consider my student loan debt money well spent. Those people are truly clueless. It adds credence to the adage, “Those who can’t do, teach.”

When higher education and the exorbitant pensions melt down, academia will get a REAL education. Wannabe egghead, meet reality. She is a b*tch and doesn’t care how smart or special you think you are. I can’t wait, and have an economy-size box of popcorn ready.

LOL ! A smart guy once said, “Obama is not the downfall of America, but rather the culmination of it.” True that ! These educated idiots are killing us. That’s why they crucified Joe The Plumber in print.

Steven Chu, The Secretary of Energy and Nobel Prize winner? The brilliantly practical fellow who suggests we coat the roofs of our homes and the pavement of our roads with white paint to…

wait for it…

solve the problem of goreball warming? That Steven Chu?

You claim he is “one of the greatest experimental physicists alive (best and brightest), who make the US research science the best in the world, he is an apt administrator and one of those who could have made a brilliant industrial career”.

Had Richard Feynman or Leon Lederman proposed World White Paint day as national policy I’d pay attention. Had either of them supported the goreball warming hoaxers, I might take Mr. Chu seriously. Until then, no thanks.

When Mr. Chu paints one roof or one road with his own labor, and calculates the amount of paint needed to execute such a plan and where it will come from, and presents scientific evidence that his plan does at least no harm to his stated goal and some good, then I will consider him something other than a grant seeking parasite.

Chu received the Nobel in physics for developing a technique of capturing free electrons with laser confinement. This is mainly an achievement in theoretical physics, reading across to fusion research.

His appointment as director of Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 2004 marked an abrupt change at LBL. Previously our premiere nuclear energy research think tank, under his administration it became little more than a “paper mill” churning out endless “peer-reviewed” screeds about Anthropogenic Global Warming. Actual research people, who did actual R & D on nuclear power, left because they were essentially told by Chu that “we don’t do that anymore”.

I find it curious that Dr. Chu somehow manages to be an AGW “believer” and anti-nuclear power at the same time; a mindset I’d expect more from a political hack like AlGore (From The Planet Eco) than a Nobel-winning physicist. (Physics is, after all, about facts that are conditioned by the immutable laws of…physics.)

As Secretary of Energy, Chu has done a masterful job of saying a few nice things about nuclear power while simultaneously throwing every roadblock he can think of in the path of nuclear power application. Helping Harry Reid keep Yucca Flats closed, to name only one example. Dr. Chu seems to believe that the only permissible power sources are the “philosophically pristine” ones of Holy Wind and Holy Sun. My guess is, by the time he and The One are finished, we’ll be down to muscle power. (Human, that is- “enslaving” animals is as heinous a sin as building a nuclear power plant, in their mental universe.)

I’m sure that Dr. Chu is a fine theoretical physicist. Unfortunately, his present job requires a civil engineer, not a theoretician. One who understands that the problem is not karma, but keeping the lights on.

You miss or switch the subject. I never said Steve Chu is a good secretary of energy or someone like him should have been appointed to this job. I was saying that the many or most of the traits of the faculty in social sciences and humanities described in Dr. Hanson’s column do not apply to someone like Steve Chu and the world of faculty in hard sciences and engineering in research universities (and I happen to be a part of it) is very different from what Dr. Hansen describes.

I work as a staff member at a university and this story reminds me of a recent incident. I was at a university function recently sitting about 3 feet away from two, tenured, black, female professors of a certain age. They were in agreement about Michele Obama’s recent vacation in Spain.

They felt that the bad press was unjustified since Michelle was “spending her own money,” and other first ladies had taken vacations but no one had complained about the cost of their vacations. They agreed that if people didn’t like the high cost of Secret Service protection for Michelle, then protection should be eliminated for all first ladies, although I never heard of anyone proposing that solution.

They couldn’t understand that no one begrudged Michelle for taking a vacation; it was the cost and nature of the vacation during hard economic times that irked people.

I doubt that either of these two tenured professors knows anyone who is suffering through the bad economy. Although one of them recently “fired” a staff person for reasons that had nothing to do with “performance or the budget.” The day after the firing, the position was filled with another staff person, so all was well again with her (the director’s) world.

The professors in my department complain that $80,000 for 9 months of work are slave wages. But I have never heard any of them complain about the loss of staff members who sign yearly contracts stating that staff can be dismissed with no notice and no severance. The staff works 40 hours a week and earn one third to one half of a professor’s wages.

Using the bad apple argument when discussing university parasitic professors is mixing apples and oranges. When the vast majority of boils on our population that need lancing are university professors, you’re no longer talking about a few bad apples. You’ve got a whole bunch of problem polluters.

I’d say a school I didn’t attend, but knew pretty well, NYU, is filled with them. Columbia University in New York is probably just as bad or worse. From Colgate to Brown to Harvard to little Ripon, home of the Republican party, the same is true. As you move west, it just gets worse.

Of course, Obama insists on surrounding himself with these pukes. He makes me think he enjoys the purity of their group think.

They think global warming is of the nature of settled law. I think they’re hatred of America is the equivalent. Needless to say, we’re not invited to the same dinner parties.

I say things like there’s a mole is in the White House, and leftists tend to show me the north end of their south bound skirts. It’s like I’m contageous.

Like U.S. newspapers didn’t have the balls to show the Muhammad cartoons, I’m waiting for someone here at PJM to have the nerve to discuss mole removal. Waiting two more years, at least for me, is two too many. Obama is so bad he need a good early exit date. I’ve considered seriously everything but calling the Orkin Man.

Do the great thinkers here at PJM have any thoughts relative to the need of political pest control or are you thoughtful, highly intelligent people filled with more pesky political correctness than you would care to admit? Even to yourselves? Discuss among yourselves.

There is an old cynical saying: “Those who know, do it. Those who don’t know, teach it”. Unfortunately this is quite often true, reason why it is so dangerous to place a person of this tipe in a position of power, because he often think he knows it all.
PS I am a retired college professor, with 40 years of teaching experience.

As a tradesman who started out as an art school graduate I had a sharp reality check when I started work (a late apprenticeship).Partly my own character faults but also the tutors all had the crutch of teaching to allow them to make things people didn’t want to buy. You live and learn or you don’t earn.
Having said that some of my best customers are highly trained academics who are pretty hopeless around the house. That makes an opportunity for folk like me. I let them patronise me,in both ways. Also their pretty young ex-student wives are very grateful!
These academics cannot imagine their wife or girlfriend would be into anyone else! No,its only flirting,nothing happens as I am loyal to my lovely wife…
Also, they often have lovely,expensive tools that are pristine,untouched. They confuse ownership with activity like so many people. Heard you on Dan Carlin and loved it, I am teaching my son as much classical history as I can as he will not learn it at school sadly. Or British history for that matter!

Mr. Hanson;
The gist of the discussion is life within academia and without. The willing accomplice in the discussion is the media who promotes the notion that “academia is superior”. To forget the willing accomplices of academia is to ignore the essential nature of liberal thinking; i.e. that “enlightened” (read: academia)thinking is always superior.
Contrast the liberal thinking with the bare knuckles of conservatism. The self reliant, academia eschewing salt of the earth individual who thinks for themself and has learned to rely on the government for only taxes and more taxes, and oh, lest not I forget, more regulations as well.
These ‘individuals’ see academia as the source of ruin for our nation as all of this enlightened thinking results in things like curly-que light bulbs, plastic shoebox cars that are death traps, and stalinist agencies intervening in every pore of our lives.
At one time the media ridiculed the academia as it was fashionable. Now with the proliferation of academia trained reporters we are left with a profusion of the very same class of individuals whom you refer in your essay.
Sadly, the truth will only come forth after the failure of academia to deliver what they primised to the masses; and this after the long march they took to become the ruling class.
Just as Greece eventually succumbed to the less intellectual but more militaristic Romans, so will the liberal academic politician also perish at the hands of the practical, and backwoods conservative. This lesson is repeated all through the history of man.
After all, a conservative is truly no different in the eyes of history as any other militaristic entity; at least that is how the academics see it……

Well this is interesting, something that my dad was speaking about when I was a young teenager, and still a topic today.
there are always useless academics, who think the oil light on the dashboard of their car is pretty.
I also know a retired full professor of philosiphy, yes I do have a problem using spell check, who grows her own food, and desighned her own solar heating and hot water system.
I am a product of a good highschool where I was passed from year to year, because they knew she was bright, and flunking out of many colleges. I have multiple serious learning dissabilities, but was able to earn a living and support myself and my son’s. My point, those who can do, those who teach, sometimes can do also, and those who sit on there ass complaining, do nothing of value.
I like what this fella writes, but I don’t think many who need to read, or pay attention to it will.

Will members of the Obama administration read this article? Very unlikely. But if they do will they be changed by it; will it change minds in the Obama administration? Very, very unlikely. Will this article make academics a little more self-critical? Are you kidding? Will one find dog-eared copies of this article under stacks of “Mother Jones” in faculty lounges across the country? Absolutely not. Are people that went to a college or university and made it out familiar with this article’s contents? Yes. Did we all get a good laugh out of it at the expense of the Obama administration and academics everywhere? Absolutely.

I taught a geeky type of computer engineering class at our local community college for a few years…this during a period when I was a self-employed consultant.

I was paid by the class at $50/hour. For at least one of those years, I made more than the College president.

Upon successfully completing just my classes, on average my students made much more than most of the professors were paid.

Some professors found out about that and demanded they be given my classes to teach. Needless to say they had no abilities in the field at all save having a personal computer at home. Fun was had by all during that dustup.

Almost as much fun was opening doors for the wymmen’s-studies harpies.

While I’m in broad and deep agreement with you, I have to say the examples in the first para of “Lies, lies, and more lies” are weak. The Rosenbergs’ execution was carried out in an atmosphere of mass hysteria and many reasonable people are uncomfortable with the process, Hiss’s case was arguably a political beat up by Nixon in full ambition mode and Mao way too complex to characterize in the black vs white terms you use. The second para is on much firmer ground but you have kind of weakened it with the preceding one.

Great article as always Professor. Besides all the flaws you correctly point out, one that absolutely tops them all, in my mind, is the absolute lack of diversity in academia. I hear endless, banshee like screeching for diversity of all sorts, except for the most important – diversity of thought. As a matter of fact, it is my conviction that diversity of thought is absolutely forbidden in academia. The utter lack of diversity is unfathomable to me, particularly in an academic environment, and is living proof to me that some people are educated to the point of being stupid. We leave them in charge of our children – who are our future – at our peril.

We are lving in pretty strange world today. Question the wisdom of someone with a PHD when you are around group of people and there always one or two people in that group who suddenly flare up and want to stone you for heresy.

This column reminds me of an upper-division Geography class I took at Cal Poly, SLO in spring of 1986. The teacher was completely nuts and the class focused on the Soviet Union, communist China, and socialist Mexico, all paradises of course when compared to the USA. I never saw so much eye-rolling by students at this commie blowhard.

Absolutely nuts. Same state system. Heck Mr. Hanson might have even heard of the guy.

Will students finally experience the retirement of the former 60′s radicals now teaching many of their courses especially in the liberal arts? Is there a possibility many will get relief from the constant stream of brainwashing by taking courses by way of the internet???

As an alumnus of Fresno State, I have to say, I always considered it to be one of the more conservative (relatively, mind you) universities in the state (if not the country), largely due to the fact that the school pulls in a lot of local students from the greater Fresno County/San Joaquin Valley, which tends to lean to the right (again, relative to the rest of the state). I can only imagine the amount of self-loathing experienced by some of Dr. Hanson’s more left-leaning colleagues. I imagine them beating themselves up in the mirror each morning, asking themselves how the hell they ended up in a “backwater” like Fresno, stuck in the salt mines with un-enlightened, parochial sh*t-kicking Valley natives (sarcasm), instead of wandering the halls of Berkley or Stanford with their fellow illuminati.

I reckon some of you missed the point about the chain-saw-murdering professor.

Dr. Hanson didn’t make it clear which institution supported the gentleman, but even as long ago as the late 1970s, when I was nearby, a professor at UC Berkeley or Santa Cruz (especially the latter) who actually knew how to start a chain saw would have been so heavily sneered at and patronized by the rest of the faculty as to inspire the weak-minded to that or even worse.

Hero(n) of Alexandria built the thermopile. The reason, it is sometimes said, that he didn’t go on from that to derive “equal and opposite”, F=MA, and the rest of Newton near-on two millenia earlier was precisely the attitude of the professors who drove their associate to bloody murder. His peers and neighbors were horrified. Mechanick arts were beneath the dignity of good Greeks, who had slaves and helots to take care of such mudane details. Chastened, Heron dropped that line of investigation, and disappeared from History.

I’m a PT MIS instructor. The lack of energy and standards among too many of my co-workers is astounding.

My students are told: I don’t give grades, you earn them – gee what a novel concept. It throws them. I lose 1/3 of the students by the end of the semester but those who stay say they learned more in my class than any other.

Professors by definition are elite, risk-averse people. They don’t make decisions that have impact. They are clannish. They don’t like free thinkers. Their pay is outrageous and their pensions amazing. This bubble has to burst at some time. Frankly, the sooner the better.

Jeez. Change a word here or there and this piece could easily apply to Federal Employees as well.

With the increasing reliance on contractors to do the real work, Federal Employees are morphing into a weird kind of tenured managerial class with many of the same habits as Academics. It is truly mindbending to listen to a $120K a year G14 complain and threaten to retire over the shabby treatment she receives.

i went to UMASS (’83-’87). Not a great school, esp. for my piddly english major. i always liked the old school profs– it was a demographic battle– the young lefties who were all PC even then clearly deviating from the old school folks who stuck to the classical interpretations. the lefties were going to win. no wonder how badly all the humanities have turned out.

in retrospect, whilst i love the idea of the well-rounded scholar, i wished i’d done an engineering or finance degree. something real. as it was, i enjoyed it well enuf. i only hope the humanities in the style of VDH get reclaimed. i feel they will be.

and hell, it was cheap– no more that 20k all up. i can’t imagine paying for a 5th tier school 50- 705k for a BA worth…nothing.

The university professors of whom you speak – mostly in the humanities – would fit nicely into Animal Farm where the (Marxist) Pigs employ animals with PhDs to say and write nice things about them – eggs and apples in return for propaganda. Václav Klaus had a keen insight into the motivations and politics of university professors.

“They (intellectuals) prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige…They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator… Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas… Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias, and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist… The free market system does not typically reward those who are, in their own eyes, the most meritorious. Because the intellectuals value themselves very highly, they disdain the marketplace. Markets value them differently than their own eyes and, in addition to it, markets function nicely without their supervision. As a result, the intellectuals are suspicious of free markets and prefer being publicly funded. That is another reason, why they are in favour of socialism…” President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus

Likewise Leonard Peikoff in his book “The Ominous Parallels” points out that totalitarian governments require university professors for rhetorical support.

“The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime’s most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer’s cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.” Leonard Peikoff

1. I have yet to see any significant influence by academics on anything in the real world (even higher education).
2. This is a disease of the humanities, where there can be little or no objective test of correctness. It is much less of a problem in the sciences, or, better yet, engineering, whether mother nature breaks you if you’re wrong, regardless of your pedigree.

This reminds me of an overheard conversation back in grad school. I was working full-time as a secretary, a single mom, and going to school. A woman nearby was complaining to her friends about the position she had been interested in – seems they wanted to know how fast she could TYPE. She wasn’t a SECRETARY, she needed everyone to know, and she was TERRIBLY offended. No way she would take that position.

That was the moment of my awakening from academia – that someone I had heretofore respected because of her hard work and obvious intellect had this kind of an attitude toward work she considered beneath her. I was raised blue-collar. Any kind of work that puts food on my table for my kids to eat is respectable to me.

I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.

Want to get into trouble? Try defending Israel, or outing sneaky anti-Semites among academics. They’ll go ape on you. But the worst thing of all, one that’ll win you permanent pariah status, is to produce truly good work of a kind that cuts across the grain and their tender, envious sensibilities. Thankfully, there are among them some rare, admirable exceptions to this rule.

’1. I have yet to see any significant influence by academics on anything in the real world (even higher education).’

Illiteracy. It’s all around you, and it is destroying the future of several generations. You can directly connect the rise of illiteracy to the spread of Whole Word reading instruction, now called ‘Whole Language’, and it comes directly from the elite education colleges. This methodology madness is now entrenched in the teaching colleges.

You want real world influence? What is the single largest common factor of all prison inmates in the US? They can’t read.

The education establishment not only has destroyed good literacy instruction, they work diligently to reject and destroy any meaningful reform.

The election of Barack Hussein Obama, and the consequences of that election. Today’s MSM is monolithic in its leftism, thanks to the journalism schools which spawn the anti-American hordes. I think the case could be argued that the anti-American impulse of the academic elite has directly led to the decline of this country, and therefore halted and reversed the progress of freedom around the world.

Here’s another academic subspecies for you, Prof. Hanson: the academic who despises the profession but makes sure to cash every single check he gets from the CA taxpayers who fund glorious institutions like CSU Fresno. Sound familiar?

Peter Warner: Have fun with your conspiracy theories. You have no idea what you’re talking about–a trait you share with the author of this nonsense “article” and almost everyone else who commented on it.

As a current professor and at a highly ranked east coast university and a ex-California farm-hand all I can really say is.

AMEN!

While I teach mechanical engineering and spent 9 years working on a family farm and 6 more years in industry, it is sad to say that most engineers don’t know how to use an adjustable wrench yet alone design one. But what is really killing the profession in my book is the greedy baby-boomer who run the administration especially at the Dean’s level.

A very nice piece of writing! He confirms everything I’ve ever suspected about academia. Having spent a few years hanging around Oberlin College, I can assure you that it’s far, far worse at small, elite, liberal arts colleges (with emphasis on “liberal”). May God help us!